Can we someday, live on Venus?

No. The surface temperature is about 465 degrees Celsius (870 F), and the surface pressure is 90 times that at Earth's sea level. You would be boiled and crushed in an instant! Then, too, there is no water on the surface of Venus, the atmosphere is deadly.

Venus, the second planet from Sun in our solar system, is often thought of as Earth's twin sister because the size and composition of the two planets are similar and at one time considered to be a more likely home than Mars for earthlings, but revelations by way of space probes, radar, and radio astronomy are not encouraging in this respect.

Venus surface is decorated with mountains; craters; thousands of volcanoes, some of which are much larger than Earth's.

image source: wikimedia commons

The planet's defining surface characteristic, however, is its flat, smooth plains, which cover about two-thirds of Venus — these plains would, arguably, be the best places to set up a home base to live.

Walking around on Venus wouldn't be a pleasant experience. The Venus surface is completely dry because the planet suffers from a runaway greenhouse gas effect. That is, its thick atmosphere is full of heat-trapping carbon dioxide that keeps the planet's surface temperatures at about 870 degrees Fahrenheit (465 degrees Celsius).

Venus' gravity is almost 91 percent of Earth's, so you could jump a little higher and objects would feel a bit lighter on Venus, compared with Earth. "You probably wouldn't notice the difference in gravity so much, but what you would notice is the dense atmosphere. The air is so thick that if try to move your arm quickly, you would feel resistance. It would almost be like being in water.

Atmospheric pressure on Venus is too high. At sea level on Earth, the air presses down on our bodies at 14.5 pounds per square inch, or 1 bar; the surface pressure on Venus is 92 bar. To experience that pressure on Earth, you'd have to travel more than 3,000 feet (914 m) down into the ocean.

Venus takes 225 Earth days to revolve around the sun and 243 Earth days to rotate on its axis. But the time from one midday to the next is 117 Earth days, because Venus rotates backwards. This retrograde rotation also means that the sun would rise in the west and set in the east.

Though we see a blue sky on Earth, the sky on Venus would always appear reddish orange because of the way the carbon dioxide molecules scatter the sun's light. You wouldn't see the sun as a distinct point in this sky, but rather a hazy, yellowish tint behind the dense clouds, the nighttime sky would be a starless black.